FBI admits it destroyed killer anthrax in 2001

Lara Jakes Jordan and Seth Borenstein, Associated Press

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Photo: AP

Image 1of/1

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 1

This undated image attached to an email sent Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2001 by Bruce Ivins shows Ivins handling "cultures of the now infamous 'Ames' strain of Bacillus anthracis" at his lab according to the text of the message. Ivins, an Army scientist, died on July 29, 2008 from suicide as federal authorities prepared to charge him with killing five people by sending anthrax spores in the mail. (AP Photo) less

This undated image attached to an email sent Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2001 by Bruce Ivins shows Ivins handling "cultures of the now infamous 'Ames' strain of Bacillus anthracis" at his lab according to the text of ... more

Photo: AP

FBI admits it destroyed killer anthrax in 2001

1 / 1

Back to Gallery

Months after the deadly 2001 anthrax mailings, FBI scientists had - but destroyed - the unique strain of the bacteria used in the attacks that would lead them years later to Dr. Bruce Ivins, now the government's top suspect.

FBI officials admitted Monday that destroying the initial Ivins sample was a mistake, but said it didn't really hinder the investigation because the technique used to trace the source of the anthrax to Ivins had not been developed yet. Luckily, a copy of that first sample was sent to an outside professor, who used it years later to help further link Ivins to the killer strain.

President Trump addresses nation after mass shooting at Florida SchoolWhite House

Ivins, 62, took a fatal dose of acetaminophen last month as prosecutors prepared to indict him for murder.

Top FBI officials and a handful of prominent scientists who aided the investigation presented more - but not all - of the scientific case against Ivins in a news conference Monday to try to quell suspicions of outside scientists, some of whom were friends of the suspect.

"There were a lot of lessons learned," said FBI Assistant Director Vahid Majidi. "Were we perfect? Absolutely not. We've had missteps, and those are the lessons learned."

The complete genome mapping of the unique killer strain - the cornerstone of the forensic case - won't be public for months, maybe more than a year, because it will be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals that take time.

"There are still many nagging questions about this," said Dr. Michael Stebbins, who directs the Federation of American Scientists' biosecurity project and wasn't at Monday's briefing. "Unfortunately, a lot of them are not going to be able to be answered in the immediate future."

Majidi understands the skepticism.

"I don't think, No. 1, we're ever going to put the suspicions to bed," he said, adding a reference to the continuing doubts surrounding the investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy: "There's always going to be a spore on the grassy knoll."

FBI officials and scientists had to come up with a technique for looking at the DNA of anthrax to whittle down the list of labs and suspects who could have produced it, creating a new field of forensic microbiology. That scientific technique wasn't available until after the FBI had destroyed its first sample from Ivins.

In February 2002, the FBI sent subpoenas around the world to labs handling the Ames strain of anthrax, which was the strain that killed five people in 2001. They got 1,070 samples and destroyed only one: the first one from Ivins. It was destroyed because Ivins didn't use the proper test tube and growth medium so it may have not been useful as evidence in court, officials said.

Ivins was one of the first to respond to FBI subpoenas, but his sample was deemed useless and he was asked to submit another. He gave investigators a second sample of anthrax from his lab in April 2002. But that sample contained a different strain from what he submitted two months earlier in what prosecutors call an attempt to deceive or confuse investigators

When Ivins sent his initial sample to the FBI, a duplicate went to the lab of Dr. Paul Keim, a geneticist at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Keim still had his sample in 2006 when the FBI realized it could match Ivins to two batches of anthrax-laced letters that were mailed in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. Stebbins said the fact that Keim kept his sample was key in building the case.